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It can be helpful in wartime, Sisko has found, to find minor things at which to be annoyed. For instance: despite the fact that the Klingons had been an ally for some time now, and despite the number of Birds of Prey currently docked at Starbase 375 or which pass through it on a daily basis, the replicators in the station’s canteen do not seem to be able to make Raktajinos.
“It’s an old Starbase,” O'Brien shrugs when Sisko brings it up to him, at a moment when the Defiant—and therefore Sisko’s old crew—happens to be docked there. “These replicators were probably programmed when relations with the Klingons were less cozy than they are now.”
“Cheif. Are you telling me,” Sisko grumbles, “that these replicators haven’t been updated since the institution of the Khitomer Accords?”
“Oh, they’ve been maintained. But I’d guess not to the point that the menu was overhauled. But hey,” he smirks. “I’m not in charge of this station’s operations.”
So Sisko makes do with caffeinated Earth alternatives. And as he sits in the canteen nursing a mug of one such beverage at 0300 hours, he can exhaust his brain wishing he were sipping a Raktajino, rather than worrying about the Defiant, about his son, about all the Starfleet personnel face-to-face with Jem’Hadar soldiers they can’t possibly beat, tomorrow’s casualty reports, the fact that they’re losing the War…
“Is that chicory?”
Sisko jumps to attention at the voice. “Sir.”
“I don’t believe that’s necessary, Captain Sisko. We are of the same rank, after all.”
Sisko falls back into his seat. “Old habits die hard.”
“Quite.” Picard smiles wearily. “May I join you?”
Sisko eyes him and pushes down whatever visceral reactions the sight of the man raises in his stomach, in his chest. While the Enterprise had been stationed at Deep Space Nine several times since he took command of the station, Sisko had taken some pains to ensure that he and Picard did not cross paths in those instances. The memory of their last meeting, over five years previously, and the ghosts it raised—Jennifer’s face, her blood, that terrible day he lost her—had been enough to dissuade him from wanting to repeat it.
But it would be foolish to act as though circumstances were not different now. Even with what they took from him, how Jennifer remains a gaping hole at the center of his being, the Borg feel like a product of a different lifetime. Even their recent attack on Earth last year seems to pale in comparison to the Dominion, at least to him. War, it seems, consumes.
Tentatively, Sisko nods.
Picard seats himself across the table and gestures again to the mug in Sisko’s hands with a jerk of his head. “So. Chicory?”
“I grew up in New Orleans,” Sisko murmurs in affirmation. “My father owned a restaurant across the street from a historic cafe which famously brewed their coffee with chicory.”
“Ah, yes. The Café Du Monde.”
“You know it?”
“I do.” He glances down at his own beverage. “Interesting, is it not, the propensity of war to make one nostalgic for home?”
“With all due respect, Captain, Deep Space Nine is my home. Not Earth. But you’re right—I am nostalgic for it. And I’m eager to return.”
“Yes. You’re to be commended for the remarkable work you’ve done there.” Picard raises his face again and bears into Sisko’s eyes, and the latter man glances away before he’s thrust back to his last moments on the bridge of the Saratoga. Let him wage one war. He doesn’t need to find himself in the grips of another.
“But I must admit,” Picard continues. “This mentality is certainly a far cry from the one you expressed when we met five years ago.”
“Things change,” Sisko responds simply.
“Indeed.” Another glance down. “And events change us.”
“Mm.”
A pause. Picard takes a long sip of tea. “I wasn’t aware, when last we met…your wife—”
“I’d prefer not to discuss this.”
“Of course. I quite understand.”
The silence looms. The coffee grows cold in Sisko’s hands. After a moment, he speaks again, voice scarcely audible over the hum of the station around them. “Her name was Jennifer.”
Picard furrows his eyebrows.
“But,” Sisko continues, aware of the accusation creeping into his voice, too tired to change it. “I wasn’t the only one to lose someone that day.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Picard whispers.
“Until recently, I saw her every time I closed my eyes.” He hears the words leave his mouth with some surprise. This time, they’re not an accusation, just a statement. And he’s only admitted this once before—in the Wormhole, to the Prophets—and never to a corporeal ear, not even Dax’s. What is it, Sisko wonders, about this moment, that brought forth such a confession? And to Picard no less. It must be the late hour, war fatigue, this damn Starbase with its suboptimal replicators…
“So did I.”
Sisko’s own eyes snap back to Picard’s. “Did you?”
“I see all of them.” He pauses, seeming to gaze past Sisko, past the replicators, and into the vast vacuum beyond the station. “Every ship lost. Every hand. Every civilian.” After a moment, he seems to return to the present and pitches the metaphorical ball back to Sisko. “But you used the past tense. Until recently, you saw her every time you closed your eyes? Do you not still?”
Here, Sisko manages a sardonic sort of smile. There is, after all, an ironic humor in having this conversation, here, now, with this man. “Oh, I do. But I see other images now too, and they’ve taken center stage the past few months. The Jem’Hadar, for instance. Every Starfleet combatant who faces them in battle. My son, stranded among Cardassian and Dominion troops at Deep Space Nine. All because of a war I began.”
“You were correct to advocate for mining the entrance of the Wormhole. The Dominion was transporting countless troops, and based on what we’ve seen of them thus far—”
“But this all began long before that, didn’t it?” He explodes out of his chair and turns toward the window, hands behind his back. “This began with the Wormhole itself! How I opened it, advocated both with the entities within and with Starfleet Command that it should remain open. Enabled and encouraged exploration in the Gamma Quadrant at every turn—”
“As was your duty as a Starfleet Officer!”
“But at what cost?! We say the role of Starfleet is to seek out new life and new civilizations, and that’s all well and good until some of that new life turns out to be hostile. And what then?”
Picard crosses the room to stand beside him. “We cannot allow ourselves to give in to the fear of the unknown and stay only within the realm of the familiar. Nor can we only associate with those similar to us. To do so would be to stand against everything the Federation was founded to represent.”
Sisko turns. “Even when that results in blood on our hands?”
The timbre in the other man’s voice changes, quiets, and when he speaks again, it’s a murmur, scarcely audible: “We do everything in our power to avoid it. But, ultimately, if that is not possible…” He glances down at his own hands. “Then yes. Even then.”
“Seems like an awful lot to gamble for some principles.”
“Yes,” Picard says, and Sisko has the distinct impression that this is an admission, the sort he could only make now, in the dead of night, in a space station far from home, in the midst of a brutal war and in the company of a man who only just recently stopped picturing his face when he thought of the word enemy. “It is.”